


Vampiric

by Gem_Gem



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Character Turned Into Vampire, Gen, Hunted Vampires, M/M, Multi, Non-Consensual Blood Drinking, Renegade Vampire, Vampire Bites, Vampire Clans, Vampire Rules, Vampire Sherlock, Vampire Virus, Vampires, biting kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-02 14:40:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4063741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gem_Gem/pseuds/Gem_Gem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>“Do you know what it means to be loved by Death?... Do you know what it means to have Death know your name?” </em><br/>- Interview with the Vampire</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bright eyes and Sharp teeth

**Author's Note:**

> I do not claim to know anything about...anything, so any mistakes in something scientific or...anything, are my own doing and I apologise! I'm just a silly English woman who likes to write and draw and stuff! 
> 
> Also, I bloody (pun intended) love Vampires. Like, a lot. A lot, a lot. 
> 
> I may come back and edit/add later. I am forever going back over my stories and editing them.

The case, at first, had made him snort with derision and distaste. Vampires indeed. However, several more bodies had turned up, all drained of blood, all with their throats almost completely ripped out, with no connection between them at all. Each had been different ages, different ethnics, and different sexes, had different careers and had lived in different places over London. 

When the sixth body turned up Sherlock didn’t turn down the opportunity to see it and dragged John out of bed at two in the morning. It was a woman, a young girl that had disappeared from a hen party at half past twelve that night, according to her friends, whom had thought she had gone home early or hooked up with some bloke. Her body had been found at an abandoned warehouse down the street, a mile or so away from the bustle of nightlife and the club that the rest of the women had been dancing in, the person whom had found her turned out to be homeless and had been searching the grounds for a place to spend the night. There had been no witnesses to her disappearance from the club; she had just vanished when she had offered to collect more drinks for the next round.

Sherlock bent over the body instantly, leaning close and hissing for more light as he regarded the throat wound. It looked more like an animal bite, as if some creature had torn at her skin, but where was the blood? The defence wounds? Surely, being attacked by something, the woman would have fought back or tried to protect herself, however futile it would have been. Sherlock looked around the body, searched the floor, and then her clothes, but merely found a few droplets of blood at her collar, nothing more, nothing less.

“Well? Anything?” Lestrade asked, with a frown, unnerved and impatient as he held a torch aloft. “You should have come sooner. When I’d asked. This can’t go on. This is…madness! It makes no sense, none of it!”

John bent to his knees at Sherlock silent command and accessed the damage, checking the rest of the woman’s body as Sherlock got back to his feet and strode around the open ground of the warehouse.

“I don’t believe she was killed here. She was probably just dumped at this spot carelessly after the fact. And some kind of anticoagulant substance was used. That was found in the others, as well, I expect?” Sherlock inquired as he moved. “Recombinant hirudin, perhaps? Why did the victim not fight back during this? And where did the blood go?”

Lestrade watched Sherlock and shifted his weight, “Anticoagulants? Well, something like that, yeah. The substances found around the wound were…strange.”

Sherlock rounded on Lestrade with an intense gaze. “Strange? Strange how?”

Lestrade shrugged lightly, “There was some kind of…anticholinergic, but none that’s known. It was apparently quite potent too.”

“What else?” 

“Some type of narcotic or anaesthetic, again, nothing that we’ve come across before, apparently” Lestrade went on. “And, of course, as you said, there was an anticoagulant.” 

“The killer injected her in the throat with some homemade substances, somehow drained her blood, and then tore at it to disguise the needle marks? What for? What reason could the killer have for taking all of someone’s blood? And so cleanly too?” John mused with a furrowed brow.

“At least the anaesthetic explains why she didn’t fight.” Sherlock twirled away from Lestrade and looked around, “The way we came in, is that the only accessible route in here? All the other ways are barred or too treacherous, yes?”

“Yeah, why?” Lestrade asked, lowering the torch somewhat when John heaved himself back to his feet.

“Look at the ground,” Sherlock told them, pointing with his index finger and running it the length of the dusty floor, from the entrance to the body. “Besides ours and those of the homeless man who found her, there are no other footprints leading from there to here. No footprints from the killer. In fact, we have made the only footprints here. Now, how is that possible? The killer had to have walked in here to dump her body, so where are the prints? The killer could have come in at a different angle, but there are no other ways in, not unless he climbed through the open roof and dropped her.”

John and Lestrade both gazed up at the broken ceiling and then back down at the floor, noting the shapes of their shoes in the slight smearing of the dust, mud and grime.

Sherlock turned sharply as something crossed the corner of his vision and moved off without a word, waving a dismissive hand back at John and Lestrade when several pigeons surged upwards from their hiding place. Sherlock then looked back up at the roof and frowned, flitting his eyes over the floor another three times with a look of frustration.

“I take it you don’t have anything for me then?” Lestrade sighed as he spotted the irritation in Sherlock’s posture.

“I’ll need to have a look at the autopsy reports of all victims, including this one,” Sherlock replied, spinning on the spot and moving back to crouch over the dead woman, checking her neck one last time with immense interest. “It’s as if the killer tried to make out like she was mauled by a gigantic vampire bat…”

Lestrade frowned. “Excuse me?” 

Sherlock motioned to the injury with two fingers, “The Vampire bats upper incisors lack enamel, keeping them permanently sharp, and the wound is almost mimicking this. Almost. It’s a little too savage, as though the killer couldn’t help but maul her wildly. Were the others the same?” 

“No. I mean, they were all pretty brutal, but they ranged in brutality, if that makes sense,” Lestrade explained. “Some victims were almost decapitated while others just had chunks missing. This one is one of the tame ones.”

“Jesus,” John mumbled, looking away with a shake of his head. “And she was alive whilst the killer did this to her?”

“For a time, yes,” Sherlock answered, shortly, leaning in to sniff at the woman’s collar and neck. The woman’s perfume was sweet, covering any scent of blood that might have lingered. Sherlock got up and left without a word, leaving Lestrade and John to trail after him. 

***

Sherlock checked the autopsies of all victims, only to find heaps of information missing, as well as the bodies themselves. When asked, Molly was just as confused at their disappearance and after searching, came up empty handed as to where they had gone, as the families had not yet been given permission to take them away. Somehow, all but the sixth body had disappeared without a trace.

Sherlock asked Molly to bring the sixth out and lingered as she performed the autopsy, taking samples of the substances found in and around the neck wound and asking for copies of the autopsy once Molly had finished. 

Afterwards, Sherlock returned to the crime scenes of each and every victim over the span of a day and a half, finding the entire areas recently cleaned and cleared so thoroughly that to Sherlock it looked completely brand new, a clean slate, no trace of anything or anyone. 

The warehouse, however, was still mostly untouched, and Sherlock took another sweep of the place, even climbing over the dangerous crumbling back wall to peer through a crack to the other side. Sherlock squinted in the darkness and assessed the small, cramped, and dank space with a penetrating flick of his eyes. He leaned back afterwards and looked up at the jagged opening in the ceiling with a frown, walking over to the place the body had been.

The victim hadn’t been dropped; the bones in her body had been perfectly intact, as had been her organs. She hadn’t been carried in, otherwise there would have been some sort of sign, footprints, wheel marks, drag marks, something—yet there was nothing.

Sherlock sighed and clenched his eyes shut, trying to concentrate, trying to recall something, anything, which could be useful. He went over everything that was found in the detailed search of the body that Molly had carried out, tried to connect the dots logically, tried to figure out where the killer was based on the distance the bodies had been found and used the locations of each one to draw a time map of the killers movements. Without the other bodies Sherlock had gaps that needed filling, questions that needed answering. At present, the only big difference between them was the fact that, technically, the most recent body had been found the very same day she’d gone missing. 

A very faint brush of movement made Sherlock spin around, half expecting it to be another gathering of pigeons, but the first thing Sherlock noticed was the man’s eyes as they flashed, like a cats, before he lunged at Sherlock. The man was tall, long and broad, with black hair and deathly pale skin, tinged red and dark around his mouth. The man was upon Sherlock before Sherlock could take a breath and gasp, shoving Sherlock to the ground and mounting him, savagely ripping into his throat in the next moment. 

Prone, Sherlock twitched as a rush of numbness penetrated his body, leaving Sherlock paralysed as the man gulped and growled next to his ear, his rough treatment of Sherlock’s throat knocking Sherlock’s head aside. Dazedly Sherlock noted his increased heart rate, something that had nothing to do with him and all to do with the concoction invading his body; his heart thundered painfully and the rushing of his blood was loud as it shifted direction, pulled to the open wound at his neck. 

Darkness crept across Sherlock’s vision like the legs of a spider as his focus blurred and dulled and Sherlock stared unblinkingly at what had been the sixth victim’s very last look at the world. The crumbled and twisted, broken down wall of the abandoned warehouse opposite was warped in such a way that Sherlock knew it had been hit from the road by an out of control lorry before it had been knocked in by a sledgehammer and a booted foot. 

The man atop Sherlock suddenly froze, seemed to sniff the air and was gone in a blur of black and a flash of eyes, followed not seconds later by a gust of wind that came from nowhere and housed a glint of teeth.

In the silence that followed Sherlock slowly, very slowly, began to regain feeling in his limbs and flexed his fingers with a full body convulsion, but the darkness continued its track over his vision and his heart gave a weak throb. Warmth was seeping into the collar of his coat, pooling in his ear, and soaking into his hair, and Sherlock had a brief moment of clarity to realise it was blood before his entire world went black.


	2. The Others

When Sherlock dragged himself into consciousness he gasped and lurched upwards into a sitting position, shuddering uncontrollably in a violent spasm that made him curl over his legs and groan. He waited until the trembles dissipated and then pushed himself to his feet, swaying and weak, his vision throbbing oddly and his hearing dulled. Sherlock jerked when a car drove passed, hissing in discomfort at the bright flash of its lights, and stumbled back into the dark shade of a crumbling pillar; it was still dusk, and Sherlock took a long moment to figure out that he had been unconscious for at least twenty to thirty minutes. He looked around for the man who had attacked him but when he saw nothing through his blurry and throbbing vision, he made his way out of the abandoned warehouse and along the street, dragging his feet and falling into the wall every so often. 

The streetlamps, the car lights, and the light emanating from surrounding windows, all hurt his eyes and made his head thump in immense discomfort; and so he shielded his face with his arms and hands, which later prompted him to bump into a gang of pub goers when he turned a corner, whom shoved him hard backwards onto the pavement. The blood coating his throat and ear was sticky and dry, flecking on the collar of his coat and clumping strands of his hair together as it congealed. Sherlock touched his neck when he got back to his feet and found that he was still weakly bleeding; anticoagulant, his mind supplied slowly, sluggishly, and Sherlock rubbed the blood between his pale fingers.

Sherlock could hardly think straight, let alone walk straight, and he blundered and wobbled down the street in a sort of stupor or trance. A constant thought of him needing to head home kept circulating and swimming and twirling in his head, and Sherlock grunted, pressing on his temples. It got louder the closer he came to the flat, spinning and pressing behind his eyes, and Sherlock gripped his hair and murmured aloud, scaring a few people from his path.

When he finally made it back to the flat the sky was just beginning to lighten, and he squinted and fumbled with the key and the lock, growling in frustration and throwing the door wide before shutting it quickly behind him, sighing in relief at being in the dark again. The trek up the stairs was just as difficult, made more difficult by his unfocused gaze and banging headache, and he tripped and bashed his shin and knee into the edge of a step, landing awkwardly in a sprawl that had his cheekbone connecting with another step. It hurt in a sudden explosion of pain and Sherlock shuddered, gasping in agony and scrambling for the handrail and the wall either side of him. He breathed deeply for a moment, closing his eyes tight and tried to compose himself and ignore the aching discomfort, and then almost physically pulled himself up the remaining stairs and up onto the landing; where he wavered and pitched forwards, falling into the door before he got it open and stumbled inside the sitting room. 

The light was leaking through the windows and Sherlock covered his face with a croaky groan, turning to stagger into his bedroom and roughly shut the door, pulling the curtains closed after tripping over towards the window with a scowl of pain. Blinking with a grimace and a tremble, Sherlock shrugged off his coat, pulled off his scarf and dropped face first onto his bed, letting the prickling and digging fingers of oblivion take him once more. 

However, the blackness of sleep, of unconsciousness, parted like the ruffling of curtains and Sherlock was sucked into a dream full of sharp, pointed, dripping fangs and gigantic bats that flew and screeched at him, clawing at his face and neck with huge talons. A shadowed figure of the man who’d attacked him in the abandoned warehouse appeared off to the side and Sherlock turned just in time to see the man leap towards him in slow motion, the sight of his crazed and warped face and gaping, jagged, mouth enough to force Sherlock backwards in alarm. He tried to run, tried to escape, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t push against the sudden heavy and thick air around him that imprisoned him and presented him to the diving, monstrous man with the dark hair, glowing eyes and gnashing teeth. Once the man was upon him, the fangs slid into Sherlock’s skin violently and painfully, pressing and digging in slow, torturous movements that wrenched a scream from Sherlock’s throat which echoed deafening around him.

Blood gushed from the bite wound in a rapid river, and splashed hot and thick down Sherlock’s throat and chest, covering his coat and soaking into the fabric of his shirt, sinking warmly to stain the juddering skin of his torso beneath. It dropped to then pool at Sherlock’s feet, growing in a wonky, dark, puddle as the man at his neck gurgled and growled, raking and twisting his fangs to rip Sherlock’s skin apart. The scent of the blood was cloying and overwhelming, and Sherlock choked on a retching cough, shivering fiercely as the mutant bats circled above, diving down and nicking Sherlock’s face, slicing open his cheek with one violent swipe.

When the man, the monster, finally let him go, Sherlock fell backwards but was suddenly standing again in the next second, facing a mirror. His reflection rippled and then distorted and he watched in horror as his skin paled, his eyes glowed and his teeth sharpened to pierce into his bottom lip savagely, shredding it to pieces. His monstrous reflection smirked widely in response, the grin splitting his cheeks and curling upwards grotesquely as huge bat-like wings burst from his back in an explosion of flesh and blood. Sherlock staggered backwards when the horrific version of himself lifted a clawed hand and crawled through the mirror with erratic and jumpy movements, reaching towards him and abruptly appearing an inch away to growl and scream in his face, sinking clawed fingers into Sherlock’s chest to wrap around his heart and squeeze until it burst, spraying out at the corporeal version of himself and coating him in a splatter of red. Sherlock quivered forcefully in a mass of agony and gagged on blood that filled his mouth and tarnished his teeth, dribbling down his chin in a constant stream.

Sherlock looked down at his punctured chest but found instead that he was staring down at his blood-slicked hands with a tremble, and crumpled at his feet was the human version of himself, lifeless and pale, drained of blood, his chest ripped open and his face abused. 

“Stop that,” a smooth, calm and echoing voice ordered from behind him, yanking Sherlock away from the nightmare that surrounded him. “You are not like him.”

Sherlock span around and faced a man with dark skin and throbbing eyes, “Like whom?”

“That whom has infected you,” the man replied easily, eyeing Sherlock with a penetrating gaze. “He is the monster, not you, not us.”

“Us?” Sherlock asked just as figures shimmered into existence around him, all of them staring with the same piercing and enthralling eyes. They were all different genders, different ethnicities, wearing different clothes and standing alone or in groups. 

“It has taken us some time to breech your consciousness, to push through to the innermost depths of your mind; and what a mind it is!” The man complimented with a small, soft close-mouthed smile. “You really are remarkable, Mr Sherlock Holmes. It normally does not take much to find our way into the minds of humans.”

“Who are you?” Sherlock demanded loudly.

“I think the better question is; what am I?” the man retorted. “Although, I think you know. You’re smart, Mr Holmes, smarter than the average human. I realise you might not want to believe, that it may… break you in some way to find this all possible, but please consider it. You must come to terms with what you are becoming before it drives you insane and alters you, and not for the better. I do not want to have to…destroy you, merely because you refused to adapt and accept what is happening.”

Sherlock frowned and the floor under his feet rumbled as if in response to his spinning and erratic thoughts, “…What is happening?”

The man was suddenly and silently standing a few feet in front of Sherlock and he cocked his head aside, “You are…changing,” he replied. “Think of yourself as being a… flightless bird that is now able to finally fly.”

“This is ridiculous,” Sherlock snapped, looking around as the others floated and glided closer and closer. “You said I was infected…”

“Yes, you are, as you did not choose this conversion of free will, but it doesn’t have to be bad, you can still make something of it, of yourself,” the man told Sherlock.

“How was I infected? What was I infected with? What are you?” Sherlock asked, grabbing his head and taking a step away from them all. “I don’t understand any of this!”

The man straightened and smiled slowly, “Yes, you do. Everything makes sense yet no sense at all, this is normal, and I can concede to you being confused, but I need you to focus, to accept it, and to listen to me. Listen to me, Mr Holmes. Listen to me.”

Sherlock looked at him suddenly and swayed forwards with a tight expression, “What are you?”

“We are, what you are, now,” the man murmured, flashing Sherlock a pair of sharp fangs that glinted dangerously but also unthreateningly from behind his lips. “He whom turned you is someone we have been after for a long time. We have been cleaning up his messes and chasing him all over the world. He is crazed with bloodlust and sadism, he doesn’t just kill to feed, he kills for pleasure, for the fun of it. We saved you from him, but, unfortunately, not before he had infected you. In his haste, his ravenous hunger, he often would bite his own cheeks and tongue; this has not been much of a problem when he is successful in his killings, though as he was not successful with you, this means that you are now infected with his blood, his saliva, that you will turn slowly but surely into what we are.”

“And…what are you,” Sherlock whispered, though he knew the answer, just like the man in front of him knew that he knew.

“Vampire,” the man said with a smile that showed all of his sharp and almost demonic teeth, his fangs elongating. The others around him all smiled also, their eyes glowing as they hovered ever closer.

Sherlock stumbled backwards in disbelief and dread, and the space around him abruptly twisted and bent, closing in and bleeding. The man who had attacked him was back and he gripped Sherlock’s shoulder suddenly dragging him from the crowd of strangers who all reached for him ineffectively. The man, the leader, tried to follow with eyes ebbing and dark, but Sherlock shielded his face and was thrown against a wall.

The monstrous man growled in his ear and his tongue was wet and smelt of blood and death as he licked Sherlock’s cheek. His fangs caught on Sherlock’s skin and Sherlock punched out, tripping up and falling through the suddenly yielding floor to land on his stomach. 

***

Sherlock’s eyes snapped open and he jerked bodily, turning his head towards his bedroom door when John knocked gently again with a concerned call of his name. Sherlock pushed up from the bed slowly but so fluidly that he swayed on his feet for a moment, lightheaded and weary, before he stumbled to open the door and gaze out at John with a sudden hiss of discomfort from the brightness that met his eyes. Sherlock pulled back and into his room again and slumped into the wall, keeping his eyes closed for a few moments more and then glancing at John again.

“Is that blood?” John said, pushing his way in close to Sherlock, running his fingers over Sherlock’s mouth, jaw and throat with scorching hot presses. “What happened—Is that a bite mark? Come out into the light, let me see…”

“No!” Sherlock exclaimed, fighting and scrambling back to his bed, sitting on the edge. “No light. My eyes…it hurts my eyes. I’m… dehydrated and my head is throbbing, I can’t handle bright lights at the moment.”

John frowned at him deeply but shut his bedroom door slightly and walked over to him, “Have you been like this all this time?”

“What are you talking about?” Sherlock asked in confusion, squinting up at John with a grimace.

“You’ve been in your room for at least three days now,” John told him with a wrinkled brow, hands on his hips and then folded over his chest. “I thought you were out or going over the recent case given the new information Lestrade said he’d forwarded to you…if I had known you needed medical assistance I would have come straight away—why didn’t you tell me you were injured? And when and how were you? Tell me. Now, Sherlock.”

“Three days,” Sherlock repeated in puzzlement, digging for his mobile and then rubbing his forehead, gesturing dismissively with the other hand. “I…went back to the warehouse and—”

“You what? You went back there on your own? And I’m guessing you were attacked, were you? God, Sherlock, what were you thinking?” John shouted, not caring how much Sherlock winced. “You could have been killed, you idiot! Why didn’t you take me with you? Why didn’t you wait?”

Sherlock sighed and looked up at John with a slow blink, “Which one do you want me to answer first?”

John glowered, “All of them,” he demanded. “And while you are answering them, I’m going to take a look at that nasty bite wound that’s probably riddled with infection—Christ, I can’t believe you’ve done this. This was really stupid, Sherlock, really so terribly stupid! Get up!”

“No, John, I don’t want to,” Sherlock growled, weakly fighting as John manhandled him up and through to the bathroom, shoving him down on the toilet lid as Sherlock covered his face with his hands to block out the harsh glare of sunlight that made the backs of his eyes itch and sting and burn. “John!”

John ignored him and pushed Sherlock’s head aside to assess the damage to his neck, leaning in close enough that Sherlock could hear and feel his annoyed, angry breathing. John washed his hands thoroughly and then moved in closer, and Sherlock felt each and every stroke of his fingers as he pinched and pulled the skin of Sherlock’s neck. Sherlock shivered and trembled, then flinched with a loud gasp, trying and failing to pull away as John gripped him firmly by the shoulder and continued silently, cleaning the wound with rough swipes and then dressing it tightly.

“You’re going on a course of antibiotics,” John told him, his voice not giving rise to any arguments. “And I’m ringing Lestrade.” 

“Don’t bother,” Sherlock mumbled, unable to look at John without grimacing in pain. “I don’t have any new information to give him.”

“You got bloody bitten by the man!” John exclaimed as he washed his hands again and pulled out his mobile. “You saw him, didn’t you? You must have?”

Sherlock nodded, “Yes…but I think he was…was in make-up or—he just didn’t look fully human,” he said with a tremble to his tone, not happy about remembering the wild and frightening image of the man lunging towards him with flashing eyes and a red-stained mouth. “I don’t know what I saw! It was a man but he…he acted more like an animal!”

John’s hand touched his arm, “How did you escape him? Didn’t Lestrade say he used some sort of… anaesthetic? Did he use it on you?”

“Yes.”

“Then how—?”

“I don’t know,” Sherlock growled through gritted teeth. “Now…please…my head, my eyes, I cannot stand the light!”

John exhaled loudly but took Sherlock back into the gloom of his room and narrowed his eyes at Sherlock in concern, “Perhaps we should do some blood tests,” he murmured, more to himself than to Sherlock. “I’m going to call Lestrade anyway, regardless of what you did or didn’t see, you’ve been injured by this…manic, and there might be possible evidence left, evidence that we needed before—”

“No,” Sherlock grunted, lying down on his back tiredly. “There won’t be anything. This is more than it seems, it goes deeper than I first thought. The other crime scenes were wiped clean, completely and utterly, leaving nothing at all behind but a blank slate and I have no doubt that this one will have been given the same treatment by now. This isn’t a normal serial killer; nothing about this case is normal or easy. I doubt we can use the teeth marks on my throat for anything, he was too violent, there won’t be any decent indentions…and I’ll bet any money that the body of the last victim has gone missing too?”

“…Yes. I thought you knew about that but obviously you’ve just been slumped in here for three sodding days,” John grumbled as he lifted his mobile to his ear and slipped out of Sherlock’s bedroom to talk to Lestrade.

Sherlock turned on his side, back to the slice of light from the door being left ajar, and closed his eyes, his neck throbbing with his calm and steady heartbeat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback fuels me!


End file.
